Person:George Pringle (3)

Dr. George Washington Pringle was the son of Elder Henry Pringle (founder/leader of the Salt Fork Primitive Baptist Church) and Mary Trumbo. Henry died fairly young (1823) of consumption, leaving many minor children who were parcelled out to trustees (see records of the Muskingum Co. Orphans' Court). Acc. to Lorle Porter (A People Set Apart) Henry Pringle was the son of English parents who went to Ireland. His wife Mary Trumbo's family, originally from Alsace-Lorraine, came to the Hudson Bay area and from thence into Pennsylvania and VA; her father George Trumbo lived in Rockingham and Pendleton Cos. VA and eventually owned a good deal of land. George Washington Pringle, one of ten children of Henry and Mary Pringle, became a physician. He settled in New Concord, Muskingum Co. and on 7 Sept. 1843 married Margaret Wilson, daughter of Rev. Samuel Wilson, Presbyterian minister and President of Muskingum College in the early 1840s. Dr. Pringle was very involved for some time with the operations and expansion of Muskingum College, and was named mayor of New Concord village in 1847. After the death of his first wife Margaret, he married Jane Cooper. In the latter part of his life things went badly for him, due in part to serious personal problems. Apparently he became addicted to opium (not illegal in those days), and did some very embarrassing things under its influence. He was hauled before the governing body of the Pleasant Hill Presbyterian Church, which made an inquisition of sorts. Dr. Pringle was strongly censured; basically they told him to pull himself together and get his life under control (minutes of the Pleasant Hill Presbyterian Church)..